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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Look at those numbers again. I'm going to highlight the bits that changed in red for reading convenience. The old Macross Compendium value gives the VF-19S's engines a rated output of 78,950kg. Macross Chronicle, for whatever reason, listed it as 68,950kg... which is different from both 78,950kg AND the 68,500kg value. Macross Chronicle's number is neither the higher nor the lower number. It's 10,000kg different from the higher value, and 450kg different from the lower value. Likewise, for the VF-19F, they inexplicably seem to have transposed a digit from the lower value on the VF-19S's specs into the VF-19F's original listed rating. The VF-19F was given an original listed thrust of 72,500kg, but Macross Chronicle listed it as 78,500kg. That's... not what it says at all. I know the wording is confusing, but please look again. So... funny story... I was doing some digging thru old boxes and such looking for the sources of some of these numbers and I think I found the actual answer. Macross 7's artbooks didn't really print decent specs for the mecha, so the specs we have originally came with toy and model kit packaging. The reason for the bracketry in the old Compendium article has nothing to do with space vs. atmospheric use... it's because the Bandai 1/100 VF-19 "Blazer Valkyrie" was originally a combo kit that could let you build the F type or S type. The Bandai 1/100 scale kit packaging presents the performance specs thusly: VF-19S: 78,950kg VF-19F: 68,500kg VF-19 Kai: 72,500kg This is repeated between the original 1994-1995 run and the 1997 reissue Bandai 1/100 plamodels, and on the Bandai 1/65 scale toys. Now, you'll notice this is very different to the numbers that came along later on. The VF-19S is unchanged, but the VF-19F has the bracketed number from the old Compendium's stats and the VF-19 Kai Fire Valkyrie has the 72,500kg figure we normally associate with the VF-19F. Somewhere along the way, the VF-19 Kai's 72,500kg thrust got changed to 82,500kg of thrust and the VF-19F inherited the previous 72,500kg figure, leaving the 68,500kg figure it had previously had as a now-invalid value. Presumably because, for most of the time, the VF-19F and VF-19 Kai were both listed as equipping the FF-2500F engine. The reason it's listed 78,950kg [68,500kg] on the old Compendium is because that's how it was listed on the old kits, which were set up to let you make either a VF-19S or a VF-19F depending on which head you built and which decals you applied. So it doesn't appear to be a space vs. atmosphere thing... more a lazy model kit manual writer trying to be as concise as possible with the printed stats so they wouldn't crowd out the printed art and product photos.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Supposedly the gel is inert until it's heated past a certain point, so it can't be ignited accidentally. It's not a great angle, but remember these are artistic impressions meant to look cool... not necessarily be 100% technically accurate. The bay in the VF-19's legs is actually quite shallow, and depends heavily on the concavity of the door. Nope, the topic has not been touched on since Macross Chronicle and Variable Fighter Master File came out... mainly because there haven't been any new publications covering the Macross 7-era variants since. When Mr March and I were working on that section, a transposition error is all we could come up with to explain the very very obvious discrepancies between what was written in the Macross Chronicle Mechanic sheets, what had previously been available, and common sense. Not the only typographical error in Macross Chronicle by quite a ways either. For the record, it's the hobby magazines, model kits, and toys from the time Macross 7 was coming out. The Bandai 1/65 scale VF-19S toy, for instance, lists the VF-19S as it appears on the old Compendium page, with a mass of 8,620kg and thrust of 2x78,950kg. Macross Chronicle demonstrably did change what'd previously been published... though, given the nature of the error, we suspect it was unintentional.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Master File's take on the VF-19 and VF-25 Super Packs is that they're using liquid fuel rocket motors... though the VF-19's is said to use hydrogen and oxygen stored as slush, while the VF-25's is said to use a gel monofuel that contains hydrogen and oxygen in high-density suspension that is decomposed using waste heat from the heat sequestration system inside the VF-25's wings to release the gaseous hydrogen and oxygen for combustion.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Disenchantment Part IV feels kind of directionless. For the third time, the big dramatic end-of-part cliffhanger is resolved in like fifteen minutes and quickly forgotten... then it's back to kind of uninspired hijinks until they start building up to the next one. It definitely isn't as fun as previous parts, and I honestly won't be surprised if Netflix doesn't pick it up for another season. It's kind of all buildup and no payoff.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    It makes perfect sense when you think about it. Hybrid rocket motors are mechanically simple and easy to manufacture, and they combine most of the advantages of both solid fuel rocket and liquid fuel rocket designs with few of the disadvantages, being able to burn a variety of different fuels with a variety of different liquid or gaseous oxidizers. They can be throttled like a liquid fuel rocket, but with a much lower degree of mechanical complexity. Simple enough to be easy to manufacture and cheap enough to throw away if the situation calls for it without breaking the bank. (Master File gives them a bit of extra credit by indicating the OTM-derived solid fuel is a plastic explosive-like fuel putty that is inert and can be handled and installed without needing special protective equipment.) The MythBusters made a bunch of different hybrid rockets. Their first, for "Confederate Rocket", was a couple lengths of schedule 40 plumbing pipe, four endcaps, a stopcock with a one-way valve, and a milled-graphite nozzle - a couple hundred bucks in plumbing parts all told - with a paraffin wax fuel and nitrous oxide oxidizer stage. Subsequent designs they tested used recycled paintball gun gas canisters full of nitrous and used fuels like dried salami, various kinds of processed gummy bears, and sun-dried dog feces. It's an impressive series of demonstrations of how absurdly simple and versatile the design is.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, they're hybrid rocket motors... solid fuel, liquid oxidizer.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Considering how engine designs changed between generations (as described previously) that may not be necessary with the fighter's ability to apply non-mechanical chokes using the GIC and the reconfigurable nozzle already present on the aircraft. Or, alternatively, since the choke moved outside the engine in subsequent designs it's possible that the conversion could simply be the installation of some optional hardware in the throat of the existing engine system, like how the VF-1 in Master File supposedly worked around its limited fuel initially by installing fuel bladders in the intakes. A pretty low-tech one, actually... the hybrid rocket motor's a technology that's been around since the 1930s, though Master File claims they're using an OTM-derived inert and non-toxic solid fuel instead of conventional solid fuels alongside their liquid oxygen oxidizer. The rest is just big honking pressurized fuel tanks for cryogenic fuel slush, which is ~1970s technology. Brute force solutions can be simple and effective as long as you're not overly concerned with efficiency. Internal ones? No. Reality ensued in that a transforming fighter automatically has less room for fuel because of all the mechanical bits and bobs, and the VF-1's design being set up to produce a Battroid approximately the size of a Zentradi only made the problem worse by constraining the size of the airframe overall to make it one of the smallest modern fighter jets around. External ones? Sure... that's what the FAST Packs on the sides of the legs are. Big honking fuel tanks. I've been working from home for two years and I swear I've changed time zones twenty or thirty times without leaving the house. Like jamming a HEMI into a smart car... lots of grunty multirole power, comparatively awful fuel efficiency and not nearly enough fuel tank to make it work. YF-29 what?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe? There hasn't been any direct mention of optimization of the engines themselves for space operations. Being space-optimized seems to mainly involve removing reworking aerodynamics to eliminate various atmosphere-only features like replacing canards with verniers, shortening wings, and fitting thrust-diverting vernier collars to the engine mounts. There is also mention of some other systems being exchanged for versions intended for extended space operations, but there is little in the way of specifics. I'll throw up a quick guide later. Eh... is it really slamming headfirst into reality if the problem is openly acknowledged as a design limitation in-universe? That thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are superefficient in atmosphere and have terrible efficiency in space has been a part of the setting pretty much from the outset, with the Super Pack being intended to address that specific deficiency in a brute force sort of way by adding more fuel and supplementary engines rather than addressing the defect in the engine concept. Later generation engine designs do have some cheats to work around the problem like the variable C-D nozzle structures mentioned previously... but also the use of Gravity and Inertia Control technology to provide additional flow compression as part of plasma confinement without the need for moving parts. The thermonuclear reaction burst turbines more innovative uses of gravity and inertia control are responsible for their far-greater efficiency and power compared to previous-generation engines. Master File explains that partly as being the use of the GIC to create an artificial high-pressure area of gravitational compression in the exhaust flow that acts as a sort of choke in and of itself to increase exhaust pressures when exhaust inflow forces matter out of the gravitational envelope and it explosively expands. lol, they rolled my arse outta bed for that one! Bingo... the whole reason FAST Packs exist being to work around the problems caused by having to adopt a multipurpose engine design and then sticking it in an airframe too small to carry enough fuel to guarantee an adequate operating time. The New UN Forces gained some ground by playing with existing GIC technology to provide new and exciting ways to cheat up the exhaust pressure as a workaround, and fold quartz is only going to make those more potent when humanity finally figures out how to synthesize it.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    DINGDINGDING We have a winner, ladies and gents! At least, for a number of these designs. So, as others have already noted, the point of a variable nozzle is to adjust the compression of the exhaust flow and thus the conversion of exhaust temperature into an increase in exhaust velocity. When using an afterburner or afterburner-like function, you need to increase the mass flow through the nozzle to avoid excess pressure causing exhaust gases to flow upstream and cause unpleasant situations like a compressor stall or a fan surge. There are basically two categories of engine nozzle design here, if you ignore certain extras like thrust reversers and so on: Engines with convergent nozzles Engines with convergent-divergent nozzles You could also sum this up as an awful game of "Where's the de Laval nozzle?". On the VF-0 and VF-1, the thrust-vectoring nozzle functions as a convergent nozzle in its normal position and opens wider at higher thrust levels. The VF-1, however, has a convergent/divergent structure inside the engine body according to Master File and the older Sky Angels manual... though compared to later models of engine their exhaust temperatures and pressures were relatively low, though still VERY high compared to conventional jet engines. On later models, the convergent-divergent (de Laval) nozzle moved downstream of the engine to take up a position between the engine and thrust vectoring nozzle, adopting a more complex design called a variable geometry convergent-divergent nozzle. That vertical line marks the actual end of the engine housing, and you can see just aft of it there's that characteristic convergent-divergent bell shape - a de Laval nozzle - which is used to provide further exhaust velocity increase via flow compression. This can be adjusted via those actuators that are also used to adjust the position of the thrust-vectoring paddles themselves. (The part where it narrows is called the choke.) The current type is just a slightly more complex version of that. Instead of the leading edge of the thrust vectoring nozzle playing the role of the de Laval nozzle's choke, the thrust-vectoring nozzle and the choke are now independent of each other... the choke is farther up in the leg inside the ankle and the thrust-vectoring nozzle is now purely on the divergent end. Essentially, on the VF-1 the de Laval nozzle was inside the engine. After that, it moved to behind the engine with the choke being the leading edge of the thrust vectoring nozzles, until engine size increased enough that they could separate the choke from the thrust-vectoring nozzle. I see @sketchley kind of beat me to the punch there, but I hope these (previously-posted) visual aids help make the point a bit clearer.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... here's hoping it's a short-lived name change, like that time Artmic briefly flirted with calling itself Wiz Group.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    The launch is shown in reasonable detail in the OP... 's probably pretty clean... the human centrifuges used for g-force training are WAY WAY worse. NASA's goes up to 20G!
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I'll have to look into it and get back to you, since my brain is a bit fried at the moment due to fatigue... but if it's anything like a normal C-D nozzle flow compression is the point. In normal operation, the converging nozzle increases the exhaust velocity and it can diverge to accommodate afterburner operation. So, that appears to be the Valhalla III-type stealth special forces carrier setup... which is a handoff from a hangar gate like that one to a rotating inertial catapult system. The fighter drops out of the body of the ship on an arm (for that purpose, this picture is technically upside-down) and is released after the catapult arm connects to it. Then it's spun like it's on a centrifuge to build up launch speed before being released by the catapult arm.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    As drawn in the Macross Dynamite 7 OP, no... those engines are drawn much too large. Of course, it could easily be dismissed as artistic license either in or out of universe, since those are holograms for a public concert... not exactly a place where you'd show a true 3D representation of a state-of-the-art military aircraft engine. Let's never mention that page again. EDIT: Let's just say, it's a very bad website that contains a lot of misinformation... this space previously held a bit of a rant about my views on that matter. When you get right down to it, the standard design of the thermonuclear reaction turbine engine that has remained essentially unchanged across the ~60 years of Variable Fighter designs in-universe is largely unmodified low-bypass turbofan jet engine. The main differences being that the low-pressure compressor is decoupled from the engine body and is electrically driven, and the burner is replaced by high-temperature plasma exhaust from a compact thermonuclear reactor. Minus the pre-/low-pressure compressor stage, the entire engine resides in the lower leg in the vast majority of VF models. Externally, there isn't a lot of visible difference from a conventional engine aside from the length... though that's because, externally, there's not a lot to an engine except various feed lines for coolant, fuel, lubricants, etc. (On VFs, there's a certain degree of simplification as it's been indicated the cryogenic fuel slush is also used as a system coolant.) The amount of detail published in official setting materials has been declining somewhat, yes... though supplementary official setting publications and non-setting materials like the Master File series have seen less of a decline in that respect. Nevertheless, at the very least there has been adequate detail about how various new generations of engine tech have differed from each other. You are correct to assume the FF-3001/FC2 design changes don't affect its external appearance much... they're mostly internal design changes only to the parts of the engine that aren't moving parts, connected to the reactor, GIC, and plasma confinement. Not s'much, no. Yeah, the precompressor/low-pressure compressor is a common feature to virtually all engine designs.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the official timeline is extremely sparse between the fall of the Protoculture and the events of July 17th 1999. The only event that's not written in extremely vague terms or about the everyday life of a character's inconsequential youth is the completion of a new space station in Earth orbit in 1995.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It definitely wasn't well-publicized... I noticed mainly because I got a push notification from Netflix about it on my phone.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... it's a Matt Groening kind of day, isn't it? Hulu orders 20 new episodes of Futurama, and Part IV of Disenchantment dropped on Netflix today as well.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    It'd have to be... I'm pretty sure we didn't all die in an orbital bombardment twelve years ago. 😉 The creators have updated the timeline a few times to account for real world changes like the reunification of Germany in 1990 or the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992. Older versions of the material made reference to West Germany and the Soviet Union. Those references were updated to just "Germany" and "Russia" in later versions. Unfortunately, the Macross Fandom Wiki is a very poorly curated Wiki that has a lot of issues with users posting unsourced claims and unfounded speculation as fact. It's best to not pay it any attention, as it contains a lot of misinformation. The Macross Compendium Wiki is much better in that regard. The SV-51 was definitely not a common aircraft by any standard. Like the VF-0, the SV-51 was an extremely rare limited trial production aircraft with very few units produced. There were only about 40 SV-51s in existence in 2008 and quite a few of those were destroyed fighting the UN Forces during the Mayan incident. The Anti-Unification Forces were not tied to any specific region or nation, they were a loose alliance of various regional partisan groups opposed to the formation of the Unification Government. It's not surprising that the Anti-Unification Forces would have some supporters in Poland, which had only just separated itself from the Soviet Union in 1989, since the Russians were one of the six major powers behind the Unification Government and OTEC (along with the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan).
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It helps, but the primary anti-G mechanism in the 5th Generation Valkyries is the Inertia Store Converter (Inertia Capacitor). Essentially, the EX-Gear pilot seat acts as a movable seat that automatically adjusts the pilot's posture in various ways to reduce the tendency of blood to pool in the extremities and slightly cushion the impact of acceleration to enable the pilot to function better under g-loads. (The VF-19's pilot seat did something similar, though primarily against lateral g-forces via rotation.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    As @sketchley noted, that'd depend on how you want to define stealth. The "stealth" ships in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier are mostly labeled thus because their hulls have been designed for passive stealth with lots of angles intended to deflect an enemy radar wave away at an angle to weaken or eliminate the radar return received by the enemy ship. A ship equipped with the same kind of active cancellation-based active stealth system could also be called a "stealth" ship, even if the design is not conventionally/passively a stealthy one, because it's using an inverse-phase radar wave to cancel out the amplitude of its radar return so the enemy radar will report seeing nothing despite receiving two radar waves back from the target.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... Passionate Walkure IS a compilation movie, so the jumbled-ness is an understandable state of affairs given that it is almost literally the Spark Notes version of the story. It certainly did not help that Macross Delta's story was already kind of threadbare and full of arbitrary and poorly-explained plot twists that shuffled a cast of undeveloped expies of the Macross Frontier cast and shallow stock characters around from one Walkure concert to the next before giving up and just stealing the entire ending of Macross Frontier whole cloth. The TV anime's lackluster writing is probably mostly the blame for the compilation movie's plot changing gears rather less fluidly than a transmission that hadn't seen oil since the Reagan administration.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    If Secret Hideout is still intent on trying to turn Star Trek into an action series, that might be a good choice. Picard's command of the USS Stargazer overlaps the Federation-Cardassian border wars in the late 2340s and 2350s.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    So... a firm date has not been given in official material. The ARMD-class (TV type) and the ARMD II-class (Movie type) were the standard for quite some time after the First Space War, apparently throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Some of the unofficial material - e.g. Master File - suggest that over two hundred ARMD-class were built in that period. The Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMD's introduction seems to have been sometime in the late 2020s or very early 2030s given that its carrying capacity is often discussed in terms of the number of VF-11s it can carry and that the Macross 7 fleet used that as their standard type from their departure in 2038. The Uraga-class escort battle carrier is noted to be newer, more expensive, and fewer in number as a result, though it seems to have also been introduced in that period given that it made up the other portion of the Macross 7 fleet's carriers. The only ones we know about are the ARMD-class, ARMD II-class, Oberth-class, and the various types of Zentradi warship. Shortly after the Megaroad-01's departure the first of the mass production Macross-class ships came off the line.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    At the very least, it explains why ViacomCBS is once again intent on talking up proposals for new Star Trek shows... they're vetting audience reactions to the pitches for Star Trek: Picard's replacement. Discovery already adapted the Final Frontier series pitch about a future where warp travel was impossible in much of the galaxy, but I see the Star Trek: Section 31 pitch that was tabled back in Discovery's second season has reared its ugly and unwanted head again alongside the old and often-revisited Starfleet Academy series pitch that's been doing the rounds every decade or so since the TOS movies.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    I dunno, per the old material I translated the ARMD-class was designed to withstand some pretty intense acceleration stresses... and being shielded from the impact by a portable immovable object made out of twisted-up space-time means the ship doesn't have to deal with any of the physical consequences of the impact. The barrier's basically a wall made of twisted space holding a relative position from the ship, so it wouldn't be pushed around by the impact because it's not a physical object.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the Attack on Titan TV anime has been following the original manga quite closely. It seems likely that the TV anime will retain the original manga's extremely disappointing anticlimax of an ending, so bracing yourself for that is probably wise. Without spoilers, all I can really say is that the ending was a failed Author's Saving Throw that tried to address the criticism of the series for glorifying violent nationalism and thinly disguised antisemitism in a very halfhearted way and and give the final villian an unconvincing last-second redemption. In short, it's a mess. (All told, the way the final story arc built up there was never going to be a satisfying ending but watching it just sort of stumble to a halt before faceplanting into the grave is a bit disappointing as well if you don't set it to Yakity Sax.)
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